The senator's innumeracy

Today I heard Senator Girardi on the news:

“A glass of chocolate milk contains 400 milligrams of salt, the recommended daily limit is 2 grams, which means children are consuming 4 times the recommended amount!”

It had been a long time since I heard so many numerical errors in one sentence.

But he also has a strange notion of how a mixture works: for the senator, if a glass of milk has 40 grams of sugar, it immediately becomes 40% pure sugar!

Brilliant. Girardi’s passionate innumeracy surprised me. The journalist, of course, didn’t bat an eye.

I’m not criticizing Girardi’s idea of improving food labeling, and it’s true that to a large extent many cereals are pure junk.

I think there is an urgent need to improve the information about what our food is made of, because if a doctor and senator doesn’t get it, what hope is there for the rest of us consumers!